Obamacare
Floor Speech
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I appreciate my good friend for yielding.
You know, we hear so often from this administration they're concerned about the little guy, but we know that Wall Street executives gave contributions four times more for the present President than they did for his Republican opponent; and so it kind of tells you where you see where the contributions come from for a particular candidate, who they really care about.
We're told that they really care about the working poor; and yet the very thing we're talking about under the ObamaCare bill is almost inconceivable except that it was pushed through by this President and two Democratic majorities, that there's a provision that if you are just above the poverty line and you can't afford the health insurance that this administration dictates--as I understand, we will be including pregnancy, say you're a young single person, no plans of getting pregnant, no ability to get pregnant, other things that will not affect you at all but have been mandated by the administration--instead of being able to buy a cheaper insurance policy you can afford, this administration will have made it so expensive that people just above the poverty line won't be able to afford it.
And how the bill deals with those working poor just above the poverty line, it requires a 2 percent additional income tax if you cannot afford the insurance that they mandate.
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I understood where my friend was going, and I had not heard about that opinion, and I'm so glad the smart gentleman had brought that to our attention because that is just incredible except that it is exactly what the Democratic proponents of ObamaCare and the President himself had said before they wanted to get to.
The goal was to use this to get to a complete government-run health care, a single-payer system, where everybody is required to be under it, and so this decision speeds that process up dramatically; but it is ultimately where they said they wanted to get anyway.
Now, having seen socialized medicine firsthand in the Soviet Union as an exchange student back in 1973, and having seen another form of socialized medicine for 4 years in the United States Army, I don't want to go there. I don't want the government in charge of my health care. I saw that in the Army. We have some incredible medics. We have some folks that shouldn't be practicing medicine that were working there; and, in fact, I'm hopeful that I was helpful in getting rid of some of those.
But that's not where we need to be going. People deserve better. But the fact is that in the bill itself there is retribution for the working poor who can't even afford to do what the administration has dictated.
So between a judge saying if you've got Social Security, you're going to be crammed into this policy, and this administration and former Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid saying that we're going to penalize you because you're working poor and can't afford the luxuries of the policy we're mandating, the working guy just doesn't have much of a chance unless we are able to turn some of those things around.
And the working poor is what I often saw at Ft. Benning when people were not getting paid what they should have under President Carter; but now the military is paid better, and yet I wanted to bring up the situation that exists. There is an attempt to use the military as pawns even while they're out there fighting to protect us in foreign areas, combat theaters. The last thing those people should have to worry about is whether or not their money arrives in their account so their family can be taken care of. Yet we're hearing from military people, they understand if there's a shutdown, sure, they will get their pay eventually when the shutdown is over and maybe they will be lucky and Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate won't force a shutdown for very long.
We know they want to force it because they keep saying they do. And of course we heard from Senator Schumer himself that this is a political game to them. They are going to force a shutdown and basically blame the tea party. The military are the ones who are going to get hurt there. This from the Democratic Party that says all they care about is those working to protect us; and yet when you see what they are really doing behind the scenes, it is no such thing.
We have a report from CRS here that says: ``Even though uniformed personnel have been excepted from furloughs during a lapse in funding, no special provision allows the Defense Department to provide pay when appropriated funds are not available to do so. In this regard, uniformed personnel are treated no differently than excepted civilian Federal employees who are similarly expected to continue working during a shutdown but whose pay will be delayed until appropriations are enacted.''
Well, I know my friend from Indiana feels, as I do--and we've got, I don't know, around 50 other people just in a matter of an hour or so that have signed on to this bill, H.R. 1297, that says--and I will get over right to the meat of this thing--it says, During a funding gap impacting the Armed Forces, the Secretary of the Treasury shall make available to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in the case of the Coast Guard, out of any amounts in the general fund of the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such amounts as the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in the case of the Coast Guard, determines to be necessary to continue to provide pay and allowances without interruption to members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, including Reserve components thereof who perform active service during the funding gap.''
So we hope that the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, and Senator Schumer and those who have been saying privately, which got exposed--like the Bible says, What's done in the dark will be exposed, and it has been. They are out to shut down the government, try to blame the tea party.
And they have expected that one of the things they will, I'm sure, be able to do is have the ``lamestream media'' that run out and try to do anything they can to support that party go try to find spouses of military in harm's way who are scared to death because now the government has been shut down and there is no check coming for the next pay period. This will address that, and we can take our military off the table as pawns and let them be about concentrating on protecting us and saving their own lives.
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One of the things that is being said is, But what about the children? I welcome that question, because those of us who are standing so firmly in trying to cut this runaway spending are the ones who are standing for the children and the children's grandchildren because what has been done--and in truth, I remember getting beat up in '05, '06 for $160 billion in deficit spending. It was wrong. We shouldn't have been there. But now for the last 3 years, 2 1/2 , to be over a trillion dollars each year is just reprehensible. It is wrapping such a heavy weight and chains around the necks of the children--some not even born yet--that it is unthinkable that somebody would invoke for the children to keep the self-aggrandizing spending going when it is going to come out of the children and their grandchildren's pockets.
We've got some that say, It's all going to work out. Don't worry about it. Look, just let the spending go. Don't rock the boat.
I saw this prayer from Peter Marshall back when he was Chaplain of the Senate. And just for historical purposes, in one of his prayers in the Senate, he said, ``Our Father, give us the faith to believe that it is possible for us to live victoriously even in the midst of dangerous opportunity that we call crisis. Help us to see that there is something better than patient endurance or keeping a stiff upper lip, and that whistling in the dark is not really bravery.''
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One of the things that is being said is, But what about the children? I welcome that question, because those of us who are standing so firmly in trying to cut this runaway spending are the ones who are standing for the children and the children's grandchildren because what has been done--and in truth, I remember getting beat up in '05, '06 for $160 billion in deficit spending. It was wrong. We shouldn't have been there. But now for the last 3 years, 2 1/2 , to be over a trillion dollars each year is just reprehensible. It is wrapping such a heavy weight and chains around the necks of the children--some not even born yet--that it is unthinkable that somebody would invoke for the children to keep the self-aggrandizing spending going when it is going to come out of the children and their grandchildren's pockets.
We've got some that say, It's all going to work out. Don't worry about it. Look, just let the spending go. Don't rock the boat.
I saw this prayer from Peter Marshall back when he was Chaplain of the Senate. And just for historical purposes, in one of his prayers in the Senate, he said, ``Our Father, give us the faith to believe that it is possible for us to live victoriously even in the midst of dangerous opportunity that we call crisis. Help us to see that there is something better than patient endurance or keeping a stiff upper lip, and that whistling in the dark is not really bravery.''
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